Justin Kerzel's film is about John Bunting, Australia's most notorious serial killer who was responsible for the "Bodies in the Barrels" murders in impoverished Snowtown, Adelaide, in the 1990s.
There are truly horrific, frankly unwatchable, scenes of brutality but, in the main, Kerzel concentrates on how the charismatic, perpetually grinning Bunting stirs up hatred – bigotry, homophobia and so on – among his neighbours, and how he ingratiates himself upon an impressionable, abused teenage boy. At no point does Snowtown let you off the hook, and Daniel Henshall is outstanding and chilling as Bunting.
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